Whew...

It's been along time. In all of this time I've had a very encouraging interview at Nathan Love, animated a couple of scenes for the Mass Animation competition on facebook, churned out more drawings and artwork than had previously in my prior 4 years at UD, started my seed planting/shade tree project for the UD art dept., and gotten a better grasp on my world. That's probably only the half of what I've been up to.

I mean there's trumpeting, I sound better and fundamentally better than ever and still love playing. Maybe even moreso now that I'm in no UD ensembles. I never felt as if I performed very well to begin with but was kept in my place because there was no one else. I'm still in the Eddie Brookshire Big Band and National Guard Band which keeps me performing. Also as a sort of carry over from my deployment I still play trumpet at the McGinnis Mass. Trumpeting has been a bit more of a personal endeavor playing in ensembles was more the price I had to pay in order to have access to the instrument.

My 'shade tree' project is titled such because of a quote I heard, also because of my original intent, about how you don't plant seeds in order to enjoy the shade of the tree. That's the same for the vision of my idea. There have been changes to how I originally wanted it to run but so far so good. Keith Lango was correct when he replied to a message of mine in that it can be hard to get others to get behind you in your vision and complete the project, with no money. So far I've had to be rather flexible in trying to finish this project, however the end is near and is getting ready to go live.

The drawings! My goodness. I'm averaging 2-100 sheet strathmores every 3 months since returning from my deployment. I really can't explain it other than there is some base, inner, urge to create and drawing seems to be one of those places that works...aside from the sketch books it's inexpensive. There are the Boston Stoker chalk drawings which all from prior sketches I was recently commissioned to come up with some illustrations for 2 enterprising grad students and their various on-campus businesses. It still seems funny to me when I'm in Boston Stoker and someone asks to see some of my work and I just point to the blackboard.

I kind of feel like I'm bragging or boasting but, no one reads this! And it's more shock due it's suddenness. As if I'd won the lottery in life. There's plenty of things going wrong but none of it is beyond my capacity to handle. At the same time there's been a lot of practice and work done and I'm doing my damnedest not to squander any of this time. It's at about this hour 0500 (am) that I feel like I'm done animating. So this is the break in the marathon all night animating time. Strange to have to explain that I'm up all night not because I working on something last minute, rather that I really enjoy doing it and don't want to be bothered.

This will easily come in as the longest post I've done but well worth it. There'll be more...'cause there's always a tale to tell.

it's time for more drawings and such...

This one is done by coffee maiden Alyson, she works there.

There'll be more to follow in later episodes. I'm not going to mention how long it's been since I've posted on here.

I suddenly realized...

...that I haven't actually put up a rendered version of JJ despite repeatedly saying that he's done. So here he is.

Filling a request to see some of my sketchbook...

So there you can see some of the development of Dondrees, the sidekick, and JJ

And some Boston Stoker chalk drawings

He's here again...

JJ now exists in the mesh [punny isn't it]. I have to learn how to properly assemble his arms and add some other details but his design is finalised. He closely resembles some of my early sketches, which you all online have not seen, and the nose was inspired by the American Dog the original name for Disney's next upcoming animated feature, Bolt. New name, new director. Anyway here's the official debut of JJ.

GAAAAAAAHHHHH....

That's all.

Lately...

I've been drawing mini portraits of of people I ride the bus with as I go home. They are side portraits and are no more than an inch and a half to two inches in height. The two that I've completed I have since taken and supersized on the chalkboard at the UD Boston Stoker, coffee shop for those who might not know. While I don't drink coffee personally, I'm a hot chocolate fan (their's is ridiculously not sweet enough, I add syrup), it's a good place to hang out and the regular weekday crew are cool bunch. So I present to you my supersized portraits, this also my first time dabbling in the world of color artwork at such a large scale. There are only six colors of chalk there, if you're lucky.

The previous post...

was just obnoxiously whimsical thinking before I had; a name, Jay Jay; and character description, "the tall skinny guy, who somehow knows everything and gets really annoying at times." Special thanks to Timmy O for that great description. It turns out that it's really hard to design a character when you have no real description of what they should look like and what parts of their personality should be exaggerated in their body. I now have a page of drawings and one good concept to go off that are making my modeling which is now being done completely in Maya flow very nicely.

It is a bit difficult to learn new modeling techniques and software at the same time but it's coming to me even easier in Maya than in 3DS Max. Ultimately if you really have the art part down pat the software become nothing more than a tool that you need to practice to become completely adept with. I have to admit that thanks to the Digital-Tutors modeling tutorials it's so easy to go through the process using their techniques for my model really makes it all fly. So here's the start of Jay Jay:

It happened...

...today my main character appeared on the flyer that I was drawing on, oddly enough I was drawing on the Chinese earthquake flyer, but he just appeared on the page. A mere 2 months after starting on his evil sidekick. I was going to model him in clay first but the ceramics room was closed. It turned out that when I started modeling on the computer I didn't need there was no pre-viz needed. I might still go down and sculpt him out because it's fun to play with with the clay. Hooray for analog solutions!

Here he is...

complete with the personality he'd been lacking.

So soon...

I'll post the finished new look of the sidekick. He has a little bit more personality and you'll just have to wait.

So Mr. Worth let me in on a few key things in my sidekick guy that I didn't know until showing him the character. His knowledge of animation is far superior to my own and I'm grateful for that fact. So while I'm modeling one character the other is back on the sketchpad getting some revisions. WOOT!

Hard at work...

I've been sketching and drawing like a madman in solving the design issues with the guy in the green shirt. The sidekick, guy in red, works perfectly. I just know that there's a better design solution and I come across a few but I'll start modeling my favorite tonight or tomorrow.

That's two...

So far things are progressing along I just need to figure out how the story goes. Although I feel as though I know my villain-to-be well enough that a hard fastened script isn't necessary. He has no outside input and was instead thought up last night as I failed to go to sleep. The inspiration of this guy after days of agonizing and consulting with friends came from an i.d. card of mine from 4th grade. The sight of which made me realize that there's an 11 year gap in my life where there are no pictures of me outside of various i.d. cards. So here he is and the him side by side with his sidekick-to-be.

It...is...finished...

Yay! He now has hands and feet. So he's finished. I've made the executive decision to make him the silent sidekick. Which just leaves an evil villain-in-training.

So quick note...

S0 I rock, and modeled the character I designed for my evil villain. He just doesn't have a name yet. Here he is...I'll post my sketches of him later including his dry erase board origins.

Yawn1

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move I say

Yawn3, this is as far as I've gotten

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Yes, I am aware that the nut and butt scratch go by way too fast. It will be corrected.

Yawn2

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Yawn block

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You've just viewed the all of my yawning Package Man to his latest polished state. Look at my progression. Mmm.

Pitch 3

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Here's  a cleaner version of the pitch. It's not finished but it feels better than the last one.

Yawn

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So here's package man again, from rigging101.com. This time he's actually showing a reason for his being in his underwear. In a good old fashioned yawn. The worst part of animating a yawn is not being able to stop myself from yawning while thinking about yawns. This is really rough blocking and the timing is waaaaay to fast. But the overlap is there; some of it at least.

The pitch, pt 2

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So here's my baseball pitch thrown into the polishing stage. (I have many more great plays on words, sadly.) The timing is more refined in this one as well as many many reworkings of arcs and rotations. Most rotation issues were brazenly visible once Alfred was smoothed and were all in the throwing arm. Once again Alfred is a model/rig free from Rodri Torres.

The pitch

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Continuing in the vein of Class 2 Body Mechanics assignments from Animation Mentor here is my blocking of a pitch. It's hard for me to understand why people who don't know how to pitch a baseball didn't look to the internets for good video reference. Also I didn't quite realize all of the rotations involved with throwing a baseball let alone pitching. The model here is a freebie from Rodri Torres and is a pleasure to animate.

Walk Cycle

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Courtesy of Eric Westlund's amazing, and so far 2 part, tutorial on walk cycles I've started my decent back into the shiny depths of body mechanics. The model is from www,rigging101.com he is Package Man.

Jumping bloke

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This is the rough keyframe blocking of a jump using the Bloke rig from Jason Baskin.

Jumping bloke, pt 2

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This is the polishing stage, taken out of stepped with breakdowns and better timing. Bloke courtesy of Jason Baskin. Erik's tutorial seemed to have provided me with additional insight to animating. Hooray Erik! Hooray body mechanics!

Wow...so, um yeah...hi

I've clearly let this fall by the wayside and I've plenty more animations to show. This post is for new eyes to see what I'm currently doing and say something if anyone still pays attention to this.

Will talk about this more later...

This needs a revision. Soon to follow.

Weeks 2 and 1

So to start with here's the blocking of my Ballie animation. I chose to have ballie take a step to the side.

This is what I ended with for my grade.

This is what I started the week with.

That just goes to show the power of the Public Review. Between watching other students' work and having other students criticize mine I added breakdowns between my keyposes and really pushed Ballie's performance.

In the first week I was hit by the "Belzer Bus" pretty hard gradewise. (The Belzer Bus is the nickname given to Mike because of his brutally honest and hard critiques and grading.) I got hit because my thumbnails for this assignment while being good at hitting the keyposes were lacking in the development of breakdowns poses between those glorious golden poses. What kind of a grade does missing breakdowns in thumbnails earn one when faced with the Belzer Bus: C- (OUCH!)

Painfully soothing. By the way the opening blocking scene earned me an A- for week two. As the Belzer taketh, he giveth.

Having more time to actually do the work is really helping. I knew that I understood all of the fundamentals from Class 1. I just wasn't getting enough time to exercise my knowledge.

Oh yeah I suppose that I almost forgot to mention what Class 2 is about. Class 2 is focused on body mechanics which is why we start with Ballie. So far Class 2 rocks.

Space holder...

This post is just to hold you over until put up some of the goods that I know you all want to see. There has been a lot more activity on here than what I expected. So I'll let you part time lookers in on what I plan on adding. Look forward to: a picture of Mike, a progress reel from my last term, my video reference, and assignments from this term. All to come probably later today.

WOOHOO! It's back and so am I...

Of course being that it's on the internet this blog never really left. I certainly stopped writing on it that's for sure. In part because I took a leave of absence from Animation Mentor following, and not necessarily because of, a disappointing go at the first semester. Now I'm back in the saddle for class two. Time is to tell whether it was a wise decision to move on to the next class. I also wasn't aware that I could choose to redo the first class but I'm ready for the challenge.

My mentor is Mike Belzer and it seems that I'll get my money's worth this term. Get ready for more posting and some sweet animation love.